Ansible Tower CLI is a opensource project (under Apache 2.0 license) which is a command line utility to manage Ansible tower/AWX from command line.
It work by sending a RESTful API command to Tower-CLI and it respond to them with output. It is a powerful utility capable of performing numerous operations that we otherwise perform form Ansible Tower/AWX GUI which help us automate quite a lot of work.
Tower CLI very well complements its GUI version Tower/AWX, its capability is not just limited to creating, modifying retrieving and deleting object in tower but much more.
We will explore more about tower-cli in is this article.
How to install and configure Ansible Tower-CLI
Prerequisites: Python and pip
Instillation of Tower CLI is simple with the help of Python pip
$ pip install ansible-tower-cli
The preferred way of installing tower-cli is though pip.
How to configure Tower-CLI
Before we can start using tower-cli we have let tower-cli know, what is Tower/AWX URL and user name and password which will be use to make REST API calls. A privileged user is required to access all component.
Note: In case you are using SSL certificate, set verify_ssl to True
Once Tower-CLI is configured with a admin user, you will be able to access number of resources and we where using with GUI.
Tower CLI Resources:
- activity_stream Activity on server, for audit
- ad_hoc Launch commands based on playbook
- application Manage OAuth2 applications
- credential Manage credentials within Ansible Tower
- credential_type Manage credential types within Ansible Tower
- group Manage groups belonging to an inventory
- host Manage hosts belonging to a group
- instance Check instances within Ansible Tower
- instance_group Check instance groups within Ansible Tower
- inventory Manage inventory within Ansible Tower
- inventory_script Manage inventory scripts within Ansible
- inventory_source Manage inventory sources within Ansible
- inventory_update Launch or monitor inventory source updates
- job Launch or monitor jobs
- job_template Manage job templates
- label Manage labels within Ansible Tower
- node Manage nodes inside of a workflow job
- notification_template Manage notification templates within Ansible
- organization Manage organizations within Ansible Tower
- project Manage projects within Ansible Tower
- project_update Launch or monitor project updates
- role Add and remove users/teams from roles
- schedule Manage schedules within Ansible Tower
- setting Manage settings within Ansible Tower
- team Manage teams within Ansible Tower
- user Manage users within Ansible Tower
- workflow Manage workflow job templates
- workflow_job Launch or monitor workflow jobs
You can do quite a lot with tower-cli, find few common command are list below for quick start.
Note: Ansible tower is no more under active development, but will still work for many more years to come. So keeping using it and happy automating.
